Open but not save .doc, .xls, .pdf 1

[dparrott]

Hey all,

I work at a manufacturing company, and because of ISO requirements, we have to do document control. We are moving to a computerized version of it, and we currently have programs in three different formats. Word, Excel, and .pdf. We want to prevent someone from opening a controlled file and saving it locally.

For Word and Excel, this can be done using the appropriate version of the viewer from Microsoft. However, there is still the "open for editing" which opens the file in Word or Excel. Taking Word and Excel off the computer solves this problem. However, many of the computers that we don't want versions saved on need Word and Excel.

As far as the PDF's, I cannot even find a viewer that won't let you save a copy (save as...). All the computers here have acrobat Std on them, and we cannot take that off either.

The documents are opened via our in-house app, so we have control over which program opens the file, we just need programs that will not allow users to save the files once they are opened.

Any ideas guys?

Thanks,

Danny

 

[surgeVel]

Would changing the file properties to Read Only help? Or does that only work for the networked copy of the file and still allow a local copy to be edited and saved?

-surgeVel

http://www.surgevelocity.com

 

[dparrott]

That only works for the network version. Thanks, though.

 

[harebrain]

Google this: "Microsoft Word" "disable save as"

First result ought to do it.

 

[dparrott]

Harebrain,

Sorry I didn't make it clear. We have a few Office XP, mostly Office 2003, and a few Office 2007, so unfortunately that won't work. But it is a good thing to know, so you get a star anyway.

I'll also go over the other results to see if anything helpful pops up.

Thanks,
Danny

 

[TheLad]

You can download an Adobe PDF viewer from

http://www.adobe.com

- you have to pay for the version that allows you to save and make changes. Note: they renamed the application from Acrobat to Adobe Reader.

If you had everything in PDF format and gave everyone access to the Adobe Viewer, that would resolve your issues but you would need to pay for a copy of Acrobat Professional in order to edit PDF files.

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"Insert funny comment in here!"
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[dparrott]

TheLad,

I am going to try and be nice, although it's hard in the morning.

I do appreciate your attempt at helping. It would be nice if you read the problem.

WE CANNOT ALLOW SAVES OF ANY TYPE FROM THE PROGRAM. Not, we cannot allow saving of changes. We cannot allow saves. We want to force, through IT steps, users to get the most up-to-date information from the network source. If allowed, the user will save the file to their local hard drive and open that in the future. When the file on the network is updated, they won't know about it, and will continue to use the old updated file. .

Adobe Reader has a "Save a Copy" feature in the file menu. This makes it unacceptable. If you know of a pdf viewer that won't allow "save as" or "save a copy", I would be thrilled to hear about it.

 

[GrimR]

what if you use Control permissions in pdf

http://www.google.co.za/search?clie...+copied,+or+changed.&meta=&btnG=Google+Search

 

[harebrain]

>We have a few Office XP, mostly Office 2003, and a few Office 2007, so unfortunately that won't work.

No, really, you can make this work with VBA. (Open a Word document, hit Alt-F11.) I'm using Word 2000 right now, but I can't figure out the right sequence of events. Take this to the VBA forum, somebody there can probably give you the code.

 

[harebrain]

Or see if this is any help:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011403151033.aspx

 

[harebrain]

Again, I'm in Word 2000, but you can password protect the files. On the Tools menu, Options item, Save tab: the bottom section has file-sharing options for your doc, including "Password to modify" and "Read-only recommended". Maybe that combination will do it for you.